Natural Gas

Daddy has a habit of singing "Pardon me, it was not me, it was my food..." whenever he burps.  LM has taken this a step further.

Tonight he was parping more frequently than is polite and sang, "Pardon me, it was not me, it was...ME!" every time.  It would have been mildly amusing if I hadn't had to cover my nose.

However, he excelled himself when he ran in to his Daddy crying "Do you want me to parp in your face?"  (I would say 'definitely his father's son' if that didn't imply I had a less than ideal romantic life).

Pity me.  Please.

Strangers in the bath

I was a little alarmed this evening when LM said to me: "Did you know I'm a different person?"  

I did a a double-take but, apart from being squeaky clean, the LM in the bath looked pretty much the same to me.

The conversation got even more bizarre.

Me:  "Who are you then?"

LM:  "I'm John Radison"

Me:  "Who?"

LM:  "You know!  John Radison."

Me:  "No, no I don't know John Radison"

LM:  "You do!  John!  He's an Italian speaker who does Olympics at home"

I was very confused particularly as we don't know anyone of that name (unless there's a new CBeebies character I'm not aware of).

Anyway, you'll know if you see John Radison out & about....he's the one with the bubbly beard.

Crepe Chase

It's Pancake Day and of course we will be partaking later but I had to make an early start because today was race day at school.  LM had to go armed with a frying pan & pancake ready to race in the playground.

Well, I had my reservations about this, not least that the pancake would never make it to the start line.  And have you seen a mob of school children brandishing pans at the school gate?  It looked like a revolution to me.  I had visions of comedy cartoon frying pan battles (with less laughs & more tears).  Not to mention, as I think I have touched on before, LM's despair if he doesn't win.

I am happy to report that LM was beaming when we picked him up as he had won his race (Hooray!) and my pan has no head shaped dents in it.

The pancake, however, is no more.

Vote of no confidence

In an attempt to counteract the over-indulgence of the festive season I have taken to exercise (I know,  I know, but desperate times call for desperate measures).  So as not to lose interest within mins days I am mixing it up a bit and using Nike + on the kinect.

For someone as unfit as me, I thought I wasn't doing too badly with the old star jumps, burpees & ski hops so imagine my dismay when I heard LM pronounce "Oh my word! You're going to hurt yourself!" this morning.  (I had thought I was alone but unfortunately our living room is now configured with a convenient viewing gallery from which my every humiliation can be observed without my knowing - until, that is, the observer decides to comment on my skill or lack thereof).

I must not let this lack of confidence in my athletic skills put me off.

Instead I just need to rig up some sort of alarm system so I'm warned when I'm being watched.

Eating by Numbers

When LM is eating slowly (mainly because he is too busy chatting) it takes all our parental cunning to get him focussed back on finishing his food.

Today we invented a new game courtesy of a cracker prize ... a big silver die.  After each mouthful Daddy or I  would throw said die twice & LM added up the numbers, announcing the answer with glee.

Making it into a game meant all of his curry disappeared although admittedly it didn't actually speed the process up.

Nativity Meltdown

LM had an interesting role in the Nativity this year.  It was quite a challenge coming up with a costume as there was just no hopping onto Ebay & buying one.  Google & Mumsnet came up with some solutions but not ones that were very practical in a church of limited size, in a role that involved "bouncing round some robins".

Yes, you've guessed it.  LM was a hailstone (& whilst some might argue that the Christmas story is usually light on such meteorological phenomena, I would like to point out that this particular version also included fir trees, snowmen & the aforementioned robins).  As for the costume, well I made some rather fetching (albeit a tad see-through) satiny white trousers & teamed with thermal underwear & silver tinsel. Ta-dah! one hailstone.

The big performance day came and for a time it looked like all my efforts were going to waste as LM had stage fright.  He stood up to sing the first song with all the other children but instead of a lovely rendition of 'Mary's Baby' his face crumpled & he started howling (not too loudly).  That was the last I saw of him as he spent the rest of the show sat on the floor behind everyone else, resolutely refusing to join in.

The afternoon performance having been a washout, I didn't hold out much hope of an appearance in the evening version, especially as he became hysterical when I picked him up, adamant that he didn't want to go back.  I assured him that he didn't have to (no one would notice a missing hailstone after all) but once he'd calmed down we had a chat (& a bribe) & LM valiantly said he would perform (even singing me the hailstone song) as long as Mummy & Daddy weren't there.  It was a little gutting to be the cause of his earlier terror but as the show must go on I reluctantly agreed.

Driving him down to school for the second, & last, performance I managed to persuade LM to let me come into the church out of the cold, so long as I stayed at the back where I couldn't see or hear him.

Well, I hid behind a pillar but managed to see him sing & dance & 'bounce round some robins' and I couldn't have been prouder.

And would you believe he spent the whole performance craning his neck to see if I was there!

Birthday Bashed

A few days ago LM turned 5.  My grown-up not so little man.

Sadly it was a school day so after just one present LM went off in his uniform demanding of everyone "How old do you think I am?" and taking great delight in informing them.  He handed out gingerbread stars to his class at home time (remarkably patiently given that he had presents to get back to) then it was off home to the aforementioned presents (recurring themes of Lego & Star Wars - always a hit) & his birthday tea request of Chinese.  I'm not so naive as to think I could pull off a party on a Friday night with tired terrors children.

So Saturday was the big birthday bash (or bashed if you are Daddy trying to organise a bit of handwashing).  We went with a space theme & consequently were invaded by a fair few Buzz Lightyears.  My own Buzz was enhanced with a homemade jetpack which survives intact only because it stayed on for 10 minutes max.

 

We played various space variations of the usual party games - Pass the Parcel became Save Planet Earth from the Asteroid (good excuse for my rubbish wrapping - it was meant to look like that!), Simon Says became Commander D says and we had airbeds to replicate the Moon's surface for Toss the beanbag (I mean, moon rock) into the crater (bin).  Oh & a beautiful Pin the Spaceman courtesy of clever Daddy.

The cake was meant to be a UFO with stretchy alien passengers but it may have resembled more of a crashed UFO.  Luckily the kids were either too polite to say or too busy eating it.

Not the cake but gingerbread Spaceman & Flying Saucers

We finished off with fireworks which whilst they didn't keep the space cadets quiet, at least had the advantage of keeping them in one place (briefly).

All in all I think it went well but lessons I have learnt are:

•  how ever long you think a game will last, halve it
• how ever many games you think you need, double it 
• it doesn't really matter as long as they can run around & make lots of noise (Musical Aliens anyone?)